The Birth of Lean:
The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master plan—TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyota’s structure and management system.
This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. You’ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking.
In The Birth of Lean, you’ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the system’s creators and innovators:
• Taiichi Ohno—the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System
• Eiji Toyoda—the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota
• Kikuo Suzumura—the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohno’s ideas into actionable items
• Michikazu Tanaka—the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization
• Kaneyoshi Kusunoki—the former head of Toyota’s production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyota’s operations
• Masao Nemoto—the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota's PDCA Management System
by
Art Smalley, Durward K. Sobek
Winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize. The A3 report has proven to be a key tool In Toyotaâ€™s successful move toward organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and improvement, especially within its engineering and R&D organizations. The power of the A3 report, however, derives not from the report itself, but rather from the development of the culture and mindset required for the implementation of the A3 system. In other words, A3 reports are not just an end product but are evidence of a powerful set of dynamics that is referred to as A3 Thinking.

The Lean Turnaround:
Art Byrne has been implementing Lean strategy in various U.S.-based manufacturing and service companies, such as Danaher Corporation, for more than 30 years, including The Wiremold Company, which he ran for 11 years.

Workplace Management: Taiichi Ohno
by
Taiichi Ohno
"If you insist on blindly calculating individual costs and waste time insisting that this is profitable of that is not profitable, you will just increase the cost of your low volume products. For this reason there are many cases in this world where companies will discontinue car models that are actually profitable, but are money losers according to their calculations. Likewise, there are cases where companies sell a lot of model that they think is profitable but in fact are only increasing their loses." page 32

Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results
by
Mike Rother
"Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progressâ€”and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture."
â€”Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of The Toyota Way

The Birth of Lean:
by
Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda
by Koichi Shimokawa and Takahiro Fujimoto (Editors).
There are a lot of books that describe the Toyota Production System, but most do so in a way that implies that there was a master plan to create a company-wide improvement system. But as the pioneers in The Birth of Lean explain, there was no master planâ€”TPS came about through experimentation, trial and error, and an evolution of ideas that shaped Toyotaâ€™s structure and management system.
This is an honest look at the origins of Lean, written in the words of the people who created the system. Through interviews and annotated talks, you will hear first-person accounts of what these innovators and problem-solvers did and why they did it. Youâ€™ll read rare, personal commentaries that explain the interplay of (sometimes opposing) ideas that created a revolution in thinking.
In The Birth of Lean, youâ€™ll get a glimpse inside the minds and thought processes of the systemâ€™s creators and innovators:
Taiichi Ohno ”the man who envisioned a way of working that would evolve into the Toyota Production System
Eiji Toyoda ”the former Toyota President and Chairman who oversaw the development of TPS and the inclusion of TQC at Toyota
Kikuo Suzumura ”the Toyota manager recognized as the most influential in translating Ohnoâ€™s ideas into actionable items
Michikazu Tanaka ”the manager and executive at Toyota affiliate Daihatsu who adapted TPS to his organization
Kaneyoshi Kusunoki ”the former head of Toyota's production engineering organization who refined the buffering system in use in Toyotaâ€™s operations
Masao Nemoto ”the Toyota executive central to the deployment of TQC at Toyota

Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way
by
Jeffrey Liker, David Meier
Toyota Talent walks you through the rigorous methodology used by this global powerhouse to grow high-performing individuals from within. Beginning with a review of Toyota's landmark approach to developing people, the authors illustrate the critical importance of creating a learning and teaching culture in your organization. They provide specific examples necessary to train employees in all areas-from the shop floor to engineering to staff members in service organizations-and show you how to support and encourage every individual to reach his or her top potential.
Toyota Talent provides you with the inside knowledge you need to
* Identify your development needs and create a training plan
* Understand the various types of work and how to break complicated jobs into teachable skills
* Set behavioral expectations by properly preparing your workplace
* Recognize and develop potential trainers within your workforce
* Effectively educate non-manufacturing employees and members of the staff
* Develop internal Lean Manufacturing experts

Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability
by
John Hunter
The book provides an overview for viewing management as a system. It is largely based on those of Dr. Deming, along with natural outgrowths or extensions of his ideas such as lean manufacturing and agile software development.
To achieve great results there must be a continual focus on achieving results today and building enterprise capacity to maximize results over the long term. Managers have many management concepts, pactices and tools available to help them in this quest. The challenge is to create and continually build and improve a management system for the enterprise that leads to success.
The book provides a framework for management thinking. With this framework the practices and tools can be applied to build enterprise capacity and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Gemba Walks:
by
Jim Womack
This book complies Womack's essays on the practice of lean and adds some additional context to the essays.

The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality
by
W. Edwards Deming, Joyce Orsini
The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well.
Published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming captures Deming's life's worth of thinking and writing. Dr. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization.

Management Articles

Going Lean in Health Care
by
Jim Womack
"Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients ? the 'customers' at the heart of it all."

The Gemba Walk
by
Norman Bodek
"the plant manager got up from behind his desk. He asked me to join him on his daily walk; in fact he told me that he walked the plant twice a day every day and that it was the most valuable part of his day...
The plant manager asked those questions and you could see the excitement on the face of the supervisor as he was answering the questions. I learned that thereâ€™s enormous power in the leader asking questions and then just listening â€“ yes; this is the key to ask the question and then to just listen carefully, not judgmentally."

The Top 10 Titans of TPS
by
Jon Miller
"1. Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company. He revolutionized repetitive manufacturing of automobiles through standardization of parts, the moving assembly line and continuous improvement or product and process. Inspired imitation by Toyoda.

Starbucks, Queueing Theory, Constraints, and Lean
by
Peter Abilla
"If establishing a consistent order fulfillment drumbeat is important, Starbucks needs to do the following:
1) Reduce, immediately, the number of product combinations.
2) Model the properties of each of those combinations in both time, material, information, steps, and flow. But, focus on the 80/20 â€“ the most ordered combinations first..."

Respect for People
by
Art Smalley
"The fifth item of my list pertains to development of employee talent over time. Respect for people means developing their latent skills in both on the job and off the job training. It is easy to invest money in new technology, software, or equipment. It takes time, effort, and planning to invest in employee skills development. Canned training programs and Powerpoint slide presentations do not do the job."

Lean Thinking and Management
by
John Hunter
"The biggest thing I think we need to learn from this is that improving management is not easy. The concepts may seem simple but most of us can look around and see much more Dilbert Boss behavior than lean thinking behavior. And the gap between those two types of behavior seems to rise as you go 'up' the organization chart."

Create a System That Lets People Take Pride in Their Work
by
John Hunter
"Using the term implies that it one person empowers another person. This is not the correct view. Instead we each play a role within a system. Yes there are constraints on your actions based on the role you are playing. Does a security guard empower the CEO to enter the building?
...
You don't need to think about empowering people if you have a system that lets people take pride in what they do. If you think you need to empower staff, instead fix the system that requires you to think they are in need of empowerment."

Resist your machine thinking!
by
Jeffrey Liker
"To maintain consistent output, one must continually adjust the
system to changing environmental conditions. This is called dynamic
homeostasis in systems thinking, or running to stay in place.
...
Maintenance comes from having clearly defined standards, observing
carefully for deviations from those standards, and then developing
and implementing countermeasures to eliminate the deviations."

Why Lean Programs Fail
by
Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
"a large survey conducted by Industry Week in 2007 found that only 2 percent of companies achieved their anticipated results... When we look at lean in this way it is not only a set of techniques for eliminating waste, but a process by which managers as leaders develop people so that desired results can be achieved, again and again. That means coaching people in practicing an improvement kata every day."

How An Aeron Chair Gets Built Every 17 Seconds
"At Herman Miller, they average 1,200 'plan-do-check acts'--that is, little proposed changes to the assembly process--ever year.
...
A decade ago, an Aeron took more than 600 seconds in total to build. Today, itâ€™s about 340. Meanwhile, safety metrics have improved by a factor of 6. Quality metrics have improved by a factor of 10. A single Aeron takes one fifth of the labor to make that it once did. The actual factory itself is 10 times smaller.
Today, Herman Miller is doing far more with the same labor force that was once producing a sum total of five different office chairs. Today, they produce 17, using roughly the same number of people. And all the while, lead times have shrunk from two months to as little as 10 days."
"

What Lean Really is: The evolution of Toyota's practices
by
Daniel T. Jones
"the distinguishing feature of Ohno's approach was to challenge and teach front line and support staff how to design their own work, using the Training Within Industry system pioneered during WWII in the USA (4). This enabled the front line to establish a standard way of doing their work as a base line for improvement, which in turn enabled them to see and respond to any deviations from this standard immediately. In analyzing the root causes of the many issues that interrupted their work he also taught them how to use the scientific approach to solving problems, using Deming's PDCA method.
...
Lean shares the same scientific approach to the analysis of work with many improvement methodologies, like BPR, Six Sigma and TQM. But it differs from them in how it is used. Rather than experts using scientific methods to design better systems, lean builds superior performance by developing the problem solving capabilities of the front line, supported by a hands-on management system."

A Lean Walk Through History
by
Jim Womack
"Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with its many advances and setbacks, it's easy to begin filling in some of the other milestones:
By 1765, French general Jean-Baptiste de Gribeauval had grasped the significance of standardized designs and interchangeable parts to facilitate battlefield repairs. (Actually doing this cost-effectively in practice was another matter and required another 125 years.)"

The Lean shut-down of Toyota Manufacturing in Australia
by
James P. Womack
Toyota again showed their respect for people and commitment to principles with their shut down of manufacturing in Australia.
"Toyota accepted the fact that closure of the plant required a transition to new work for most employees and that Toyota needed to take the lead. Senior management understood that its obligation before producing the last car was to manufacture 2,600 upskilled and reskilled employees equipped for new careers."

Zenjidoka - A Simple Tool for a Complex Problem
by
Norman Bodek
"Had the tools of the Toyota Production System been extended from the factory floor worker to every employee who makes contact with the customer, Toyota could have dramatically reduced the resulting financial impact and human tragedy.
...
Zenjidoka is a new word meaning "Total Jidoka." Instead of confining Jidoka to the factory floor, Zenjidoka extends Jidoka to every employee who has any contact with the end customer."

Andon Cords at the Toyota Takaota Plant
by
Mark Graban
"They pull the cord and a light flashes on an 'andon board' It tells the team leader which station has a problem (and music plays). Within seconds, a team leader (having two stripes on his hat) shows up to help. There is one team leader for every eight workers, on average (or 14% of their labor waiting for problems or responding to them)."

In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity
Toyota has “revolutionized the way we serve our community,” said Margarette Purvis, the chief executive and president of the Food Bank.
But Toyota’s initial offer to the charity in 2011 was met with apprehension.
“They make cars; I run a kitchen,” said Daryl Foriest, director of distribution at the Food Bank’s pantry and soup kitchen in Harlem. “This won’t work.”
When Toyota insisted it would, Mr. Foriest presented the company with a challenge.
“The line of people waiting to eat is too long,” Mr. Foriest said. “Make the line shorter.”

Shigeo Shingo: Influence on TPS
by
Art Smalley
An Interview with Mr. Isao Kato. "his main contribution to Toyota was actually as an instructor of fundamental process improvement methods and developer of several thousand manufacturing engineers in the company. This influence should be properly recognized as we all learned a great deal from him on how to see problems in production."

Lean Health Care? It Works!
by
Patricia Panchak
"A group of Iowa manufacturing executives has already taken Jimmerson's recommendation a few steps further: They're teaming up with their health-care providers, showing them the benefits, educating them on the principles and practices, and helping them to

The Role of Leadership in Software Development
by
Mary Poppendieck
"In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about 'the matrix problem', alignment, waste cutting, planning

Dr. DemingÊ¼s Camping Expedition
"Asking why all the time is the most effect route to overcoming problems. "The only drawback to it IÊ¼ve found is when youÊ¼ve needed only three whys to get to the root cause, some determined people still go on to ask two more. Or else they stop at the fifth, even if they havenÊ¼t gotten to the root cause...
Blinded by the quality tools and techniques, you have missed the completely obvious"

Toyota's Top Engineer on How to Develop Thinking People
by
Jon Miller, Taiichi Ohno
"Mr. Ohno often said to us, 'Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with you head, think with your hands.' He also taught us, 'People who can't understand numbers are useless. The gemba where numbers are not visible is also bad. However, people who only look at the numbers are the worst of all.'"

My First Trip to Japan
by
Peter R. Scholtes
Report on trip to Japan to learn about how Japanese management focused on quality and productivity improvement to meet and exceed customers needs and expectations.

Comparing Lean Principles to the 14 Toyota Principles
"Toyota Principle #1: Base Your Management Decisions on a Long-Term Philosophy, Even at the Expense of Short-Term Financial Goals.
...
Stopping to fix problems puts an organization in a systematic problem solving method (Lean Principle #4) so that bad quality is not passed on and variation is reduced from the system."

The Equally Important â€œRespect for Peopleâ€ Principle
by
Bob Emiliani
"The 'Respect for People' principle encompasses all key stakeholders: employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and communities. Thus, rather than representing a single dyad, the 'Respect for People' principle is a multilateral expression of the need for balanced, mutually respectful relationships, cooperation, and co-prosperity with these key stakeholders."

Womack's Lean versus Ohno's TPS
by
Jon Miller, Ron Pereira
As the blog post indicates, look to the comments for the well expressed discussion of the comparison of lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System.
"Second, the Toyota Production System lives and belongs within Toyota. Any company emulating the TPS needs to study it deeply and then announce a never-ending commitment to developing the YOUR COMPANY business / operating / production System. Lean manufacturing is just a small part of it. Companies that do this are ridiculously successful."

Are lean principles universal?
by
Michael Ballé
"There is only one golden rule: we make people before we make parts. This requires a spirit of challenge, open mind and teamwork, as Pascal Dennis phrased it in his great lean novel Andy and Me. Every industry is different, but all human beings share the same capabilities and potentials â€“ that is universal. As one Sensei once told me, the biggest room is the room for improvement."

Kanban Family Job Chart
by
Peter Abilla
"Our family needs something that is visible, without equivocation, and shows the Person, Jobs, Day, and Status. So, we created a Kanban Family Job Chart
...
We want, instead, to teach self-reliance, demonstrate our trust in the kids, and help them grow

Treat yourself to the best coach you can find–talking lean management with Michael Ballé
by
Michael Ballé
The essential steps of becoming a lean leader are first, to lead from the ground up: to spend a lot of time at the gemba, challenging and listening, teaching problem solving and clearing obstacles for employees, encouraging kaizen and learning from people’s initiatives and creativity in order to align the company’s direction with individual fulfillment.
The next step is to accept the learn-by-doing discipline of a pull system. Without the tension of the pull system, real problems won’t appear and people will spend their time kaizening irrelevant issues, essentially learning the wrong things.
The third step is to understand the importance of teamwork and to learn how to intensify collaboration. Quality of problem solving is mostly dependent on how intense the collaboration between people from different specialties. The key to lean leadership is a gut feeling understanding that every one wants to understand where the company is going and why, and wants to contribute to that goal if not discouraged by silly policies and petty bosses. So the true aim of lean leadership is to enable every employee to partake in the joy of creation by having suggestions to move the business forward in their own job sphere, and implementing these suggestions themselves.

TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences
by
Art Smalley
"In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time), and Jidoka (build in quality at the process), as well as the notion of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of waste in all operations to improve quality, cost, productivity, lead-time, safety, morale and other metrics as needed. This clear objective has not substantially changed since the first internal TPS training manual was drafted over thirty years ago."

Dr. Demings 1950 Lecture to Japanese Top Management
"In 1950, Dr. Deming gave a lecture to 80% of the top management people in Japan. What follows is a English translation of the original Japanese transcript. John Dowd made this happen a few years back and has agreed to share it with the Deming Community."

Coach Says: What Do You Think?
by
John Shook
"This attitude underscores the simple truth that coaching others in a lean system often involves a tough, disciplined, and unyielding focus. That is to say, respect is not just observing proper etiquette but constantly challenging individuals to perform at their highest level."

Management Web Sites and Resources

Lean Enterprise Institute
by
Jim Womack
"We carefully develop hypotheses about lean thinking and experiment to see which approaches work best in the real world. We then write up and teach what we discover, providing new methods for organizational transformation. We strive to answer the simple question of every manager, "What can I do on Monday morning to make a difference in my organization?" And, by creating a strong Lean Community through our website and public events we try to give managers the courage to become lean change agents."

Lean Edge
by
Michael Ballé, H. Thomas Johnson, Daniel T. Jones, Art Smalley, Steven Spear, Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother
"Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners).
...
The aim of the discussion [on the site] is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management."

Gemba Tales
Blog by Mark Hamel exploring experiences (some successful, some not) of the author and other lean practitioners and shared for the purpose of providing insight into the application of lean concepts.

Lean Journey
"My Lean Journey started about 10 years ago with a career change from R&D to manufacturing. I started this Blog to share lessons along the way and chronicle 'My Lean Journey in the Quest for True North'. With so much emphasis on continuous improvement we often miss the true teaching of TPS (Thinking People System). Lean is a 'Learning' process so sharing your lessons and opinions are welcome."

Got Boondoggle
by
Mike Wroblewski
"My lean experiences include learning directly from the original lean leaders including Dr. Shigeo Shingo. As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I believe quality is a cornerstone of all improvement actions. By sharing these experiences and insights, my hope is that you may benefit on your lean journey."

Jamie Flinchbaugh
by
Jamie Flinchbaugh
Blog on lean culture, transformational leadership, and entrepreneurial excellence. Jamie is a consultant and co-author of The Hitchhiker.s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road.

Agile Manufacturing
Blog by George Bohan, keeping you informed on lean and agile manufacturing.

Lean Post
Articles from the Lean Enterprise Institute including authors: Michael Ballé, Jim Womack and John Shook and many guest authors.

Learning about Lean
"I started writing Learning About Lean in September 2002. It chronicles my efforts to implement the Toyota Production System in now two different orginizational settings." by Joe Ely

Toyota Production System
Site on Toyota.com. "The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on two concepts: The first is called 'jidoka'(which can be loosely translated as 'automation with a human touch') which means that when a problem occurs, the equipment stops immediately, preventing defective products from being produced; The second is the concept of 'Just-in-Time,' in which each process produces only what is needed by the next process in a continuous flow."

Lean Simulations
"The focus of this site is Lean training material, ready-to-use and free. I am searching the web for lean simulations, lean games, presentations, and real world examples. Please feel free to email me your material and I will link to it or post it."

Beyond Lean
Blog by industrial engineering with the theme of reflecting on lean management and the idea that business units should be educated on lean thinking and principles.

Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter
by
John Hunter, William G. HunterGeorge Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters.
Bill also was a leader in the emergence of the management improvement movement. George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bill Hunter was also the founding chair of the ASQ statistics division.

Manufacturing Leadership Center
by
Bill Waddell
Bill Waddell shares his knowledge, opinions, experience and ideas to point out the failures of companies, organizations, and individuals in the manufacturing industry while also lauding those that understand true excellence.

Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections
by
John Hunter
The aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life.
The site provides connections to resources on a wide variety of management topics to help managers improve the performance of their organization. The site was started in 1996 by John Hunter.